Although micromachine technology continues to rapidly expand, such machines have in practice typically been employed only as microsensors. For example, there are silicon microsensor chips that sense mechanical vibrations to establish acceleration, and there are other microsensors, known as silicon diaphragm pressure sensors, which measure pressure. Chemical sensors have also been fabricated on silicon substrates to sense ion concentration, dielectric properties of materials, organic vapor concentrations and gas concentration, etc.
Most microstructures, such as diaphragms and microbridges, have been structures with relatively immovable elements or members. Recently, however, micromachine technology has extended to the fabrication of microactuators having moving members; for example, reference U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,943,750 and 4,997,521, both of which are entitled "Electrostatic Micromotor."
Using basic silicon technology, numerous movable micro-objects fashioned as machines can be fabricated on a silicon substrate. These micromachines are composed of microstructures defined on a single substrate using conventional large-scale integration (LSI) or very-large-scale integration (VLSI) processing. Unfortunately, a significant disadvantage of existing micromachines is that the devices are so small, practical uses are few. For example, an electrostatic motor 1 micrometer by 0.1 micrometer cannot drive anything, except perhaps other micromachine gears.
Thus, presented herein is a novel extension of existing micromachine technology that seeks practical implementations for such technology. A goal of the present invention is to provide machines capable of useful work that are fabricated with micromachine technology, but are much larger than otherwise practical with such technology.